Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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6.9.12

With the departure of another high-level executive from Louisiana State
University’s hospital and medical division, that indicates the necessary change
in culture is occurring to improve system performance and to have it operate
more efficiently.

While the old hands being replaced, first
Fred Cerise by the Board of Supervisors and then
with his replacement Frank Opelka informing Cerise’s immediate subordinate Roxanne
Townsend that he was replacing her choices to head up some system hospitals
triggering her resignation, unfortunately experience goes with them that might
be useful as the system begins its long-overdue transformation from
state-supported provider to quasi-public status and hopefully beyond. Former
Gov. Kathleen Blanco
indicated as such when she opined about Cerise’s departure that “I think they made a
terrible mistake firing Fred Cerise, a man with so much integrity and so much
knowledge on how to serve people”

No doubt – if you are invested in a government-run health care model
for the indigent, as was Blanco and her allies and former appointees Cerise and
Townsend. But that is a deviant model among the states, with no other state sharing
the charity model foisted upon the state over 75 years ago, and for good reason,
as it has produced
low outcomes at high cost. And for that same reason it’s not the model that
the Gov. Bobby
Jindal Administration wishes to follow.

5.9.12

While generally the comments made by former New Orleans Mayor Marc
Morial at his party’s national convention have no basis in reality, they
illustrate why tighter voting registration requirements are vital to the health
of American representative democracy, including in Louisiana.

Morial, who now heads the National
Urban League, opined to Democrats that laws requiring certain, positive
identification of potential voters were a plot by wild-eyed racists, presumably
not Democrats, to bring back “the old Jim Crow.” Then in expressing approval of
laws that allow for loopholes, he firmly came down in the camp of those who
would subvert democracy because anything but laws mandating strict
identification measures with government-supplied, if need be free to recipients,
photo identifications cards allow for fraud.

The vanguard states for honesty at the polling place are Indiana and
Georgia, which have these requirements. Even without that identification, one
can vote provisionally but then shortly after the election must produce it for
the vote to count. Other states like Louisiana generally require photo
identification but have exceptions granted that easily may be used to cheat.

4.9.12

Scooping up the low-hanging fruit is easy. But new Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington will need to get a lot more ambitious if he is to promote long term cures for what ails the department.

Elected last fall to succeed a retiring Larry Deen, as parish executive offices work in Louisiana, Whittington had to wait over half a year to assume his new post. In the interim, Deen doled out some hefty promotions and pay raises that took a deteriorating fiscal condition born of spendthrift ways and pushed it into deficit spending.

For over a decade, Deen had been ramping up expenditures with an ever-increasing size of his agency as it performed more peripheral functions or others that should have been left to other law enforcement agencies, while its performance stagnated or declined. Eventually, revenues calculated at constant property tax levels weren’t enough so in 2010 he raised collections by announcing a roll forward of millages (sheriffs are the only unitary authority of all local governments so, unlike with other units, they may do this unilaterally).

3.9.12

What first seems counterintuitive about the dueling major party
presidential candidates’ recent trips to Louisiana becomes perfectly understandable
once we remember who and what the parties, candidates, and ideologies involved
are.

Following the custom born in the 20th Century, Pres. Barack Obama
is visiting the state most of which recently was declared by him as a disaster
area from Hurricane Isaac, at the invitation of Gov. Bobby
Jindal, days after the storm departed the state even as its effects linger.
But expanding upon the custom, days earlier Obama’s Republican candidate for
the presidency former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney took a brief tour also at Jindal’s invitation.

Indeed, Romney came right after his party’s national convention closed,
cancelling a campaign swing through the very competitive state of Virginia to
head to wringing-out Louisiana where he will win by a comfortable margin. Meanwhile,
Obama said during and right after the natural catastrophe he
watched sports on television, and only after word got out that Romney would
show up did he commit to coming on by the state, after doing some campaigning in
the competitive state of Iowa where he watched some
football on TV and scarfed down pizza.

2.9.12

Federal District Court Judge Susie Morgan, recently appointed to the
bench by Pres. Barack Obama,
followed through for her political allies by ignoring the most pertinent
constitutional question concerning the succession process determining who will
be the next chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. Hopefully, more
responsible jurisprudence will prevail in the future of this case that pits
whether abuse of power or rule of law prevails in the state.

It involves Associate Justice Bernette Johnson, who has
sat with the Court since 1994 but did not get elected to it until 2000, after
two other members were elected. Constitutionally, the senior most justice in
point of service gets to be chief justice, with the current holder of that Kitty Kimball retiring at
the end of the year.

The original agreement
that allowed Johnson, elected to an appeals court, to make decisions with the
Supreme Court, was amended years
later to reflect passage of an act of the
Legislature (although it did not codify this in statute)
that said the judge in this position was to get the “benefits” of Court service
“as provided by law,” deemed by Johnson and other special interest allies,
ideological fellow-travelers among elected officials, and the Obama
Administration through this subsequent act’s explicit mention to include
seniority for purposes of determining who sits as chief justice.